Serbians
The Serbians have the power of Prestige. They replace the Turks. Suggestions and spoilers *Strengths: Good land army, with strong infantry and cavalry, excellent for early offensive strategies. *Weaknesses: Mediocre late game siege and offensive capability - whatever infantry units Serbia receives in the late game are mostly defensive, no advanced navy benefits from autocratic rule. In Rise of Nations, the primary way to win the game is to capture cities, and this is where the Serbians shine. With this perk, the Serbian faction does well in all ages, having a slew of units that create an offensive civ. Most civs with good offensive units in the beginning can suffer from the fact that those units generally aren't as effective in capturing cities, which is what you need to do in order to win, rather then just give them a bloody nose and give you an advantage. Particularly interesting is Serbia's faster city assimilation ability. This will make the capture of cities and moving on to the next target much easier. Using siege machines, you will pummel a city into submission faster, and then have the same hang back further so that defenders will have a harder time destroying them. The faster assimilation rate will also make the defenders' job very tough in sending reinforcements in time to prevent a city's capture. In the reverse, Serbia will also be just as good in recapturing cities lost to the enemy, making the overall tendency much more likely that Bohemia will be doing much of the conquering, once it gets its edge into the game. However, as good as Serbia is at assimilating cities, its army leaves a great deal to be desired. The first is that it lacks the Centralisation technology. While this is not an issue (4 out of 6 Serbian mainstream units get late-game upgrades), it also means that Serbia may find itself lacking in a proper economic bonus at the onset of the Imperial Era. The second is that Serbia's strengths in technology are also lacking since the War Cog and all its upgrades as well as the Bombard are not available, so whatever military perks Serbia gets must be confined mostly to the land and to the early game as well. Economy-wise, Serbia isn't that strong and must rely on its higher population cap and its cheaper villagers to stay on top. Thus far, the right way to play Serbia is to always plan to be aggressive at the beginning at the game, and to ally with those whose abilities complement yours - which usually tend to be those with naval benefits. Serbia's goal at the beginning is to rush two things - the opponent and the Castle Age. Because Serbia gets free spawning siege machines from the Siege Workshop and these units also upgrade fairly quickly, they can be put to good use in levelling your foes' fortifications and taking their settlements. Having cheaper Military research also means that you can achieve a population boom fairly quick too, allowing for the amassing of a large army and for faster upgrades in the Castle Age. In the Imperial Era, improved defensive structures such as the Munitions Ministry, the Bastion, and the Chapterhouse all contribute towards the consolidation of whatever gains you have made, provided your initial infantry and cavalry rush should have pretty much ensured that you have successfully kept your opponent at bay. CtW guide Serbia is one of four factions which are not available to be played whose behaviour is heavily scripted. Like Armenia, Serbia begins as a vassal of the mightly Byzantine empire (bringing its army count to a whopping 3!), but because the Byzantine armies are based at home, it will take some time for them to be used to perform overrun attacks in Europe.. Faction summary *Highly offensive faction, whose highlights are free siege units and cheap villagers. *City Space — Cheap villagers make good militiamen and builders. Play this civ in the preliminary rounds as you would China, by creating lots of farms...and then lots of villagers to take over those farms. *The Invisible Hand — Build your own merchants and caravans to improve trade while taking apart your opponents' own to dirsupt trade and line your pockets with your cavalry archers. Accompany them with a duke patriot unit to protect them from attrition and gather resources from whatever units you destroy. *Box Office Special — Officers are created cheaper and faster, so you can be assured that your armies will never have a lack of leadership, allowing them to perform to the best of their abilities. Settlements: Ras; Beograd; Niš; Priština; Kruševac; Kragujevac; Subotica; Zrenjanin; Pančevo; Čačak; Novi Pazar; Kraljevo; Smederevo; Leskovac; Valjevo; Vranje; Šabac; Užice; Sombor; Požarevac; Pirot; Zaječar; Kikinda; Sremska Mitrovica; Jagodina; Vršac; Bor; Ruma; Bačka Palanka; Prokuplje; Inđija; Lazarevac; Aranđelovac '''Leaders: '''Uros, Petar, Jovan, Lazar, Stefan, Vukan, Constantine Bodin '''Best age(s): '''Castle Age, although it can also score a quick win using its faster city assimilation rates during the Dark AGe. History Modern Serbia can trace its roots to a small state called Rascia which emerged at the beginnign of the 8th century. Christianity arrived in the 9th century, but until the 13th century Rascia was a vassal of the Byzantine Empire. Following independence from Byzantium, the 13th and 14th centuries were the golden age of Serbia, which saw great prosperity and expansion but the late 14th century saw a new threat to Serbia — the Ottoman Turks. Following a string of military defeats culminating in the costly battle of Kosovo in 1389, the Turks annexed the cities of Smederevo and Beograd. Serbian resistance continued to persist but was mostly unsuccessful and Serbia would remain part of the Ottoman Empire until the 19th century when she could emerge independent once more. Rascia By the 7th century, a tribe of Slavs were allowed by the Eastern Roman Emperor Heraclius to settle in the Balkan highlands. These were the ancestors of the Serbs. Byzantine sources of the 8th century state that a certain Archon (in Greek, "overlord") emerged dominant over his neighbours and founded the state of Rascia, centred around the city of Ras (centred around Stari Ras, near the village of Raška in present-day Serbia). Legend holds that this man was named Visešlav. By the 10th century, this small state had embraced the Orthodox Christianity of its larger Bulgar and Byzantine neighbours, and was even recognised by the Byzantine Empire. Despite this, however, Rascia's existence was tenuous. To the north lay the Catholic Holy Roman (or as Voltaire would say, German) Empire, and a Turkic tribe known as the Magyar, the scions of Hungary. Another Turkic tribe, the Bulgars menaced Serbia from Thrace in the east while the Byzantine Empire was also involved in intrigues against Serbia. Worse than these, however, was the latent dissension among the heirs of Visešlav and their own heirs, which threatened the very freedom of the Serbs. Upon the death of Časlav in the mid-10th century, Rascian unity was compromised and the polity was carved up by its neighbours, most notably the Byzantines. who annexed Ras and surrounding areas for themselves. Byzantine domination De facto Byzantine rule in Serbia was to last for almost a century, and Ras was reorganised as a capetanate or "captaincy", with a Byzantine military governor in charge. Too little written evidence remains to explain what life may have been like, but what is not in dispute is that Byzantine domination enriched Serbian culture. The many Byzantine-styled cathedrals as well as the trappings of Eastern Roman court protocol and church services are all testimony to just how much was absorbed from Byzantium, but perhaps more importantly, especially for mediaeval Serbia, was the adoption of Roman-styled jurisprudence through both government and religion in later centuries which may have helped post-Byzantine Serbian rulers better in consolidating and exercising power. However, what is not in dispute is that by the mid-11th century, the Byzantines were in trouble, and were facing a slew of enemies, among which the most dangerous were the Turks. The Bulgars, once subjects of the Byzantines, were also baring their teeth, and the empire faced the depredations of Pechenegs in Asia, while a new race of invaders from Western Europe called the Normans had established themselves in Italy. In the wake of weakening Byzantine authority, one Serbian nobleman, Stefan Vojislav of Doclea, chose to rebel and eventually seized the southwestern Adriatic coast as well as the ancient city of Ras. The Long Road to Royal Rule The rule of Stefan Vojislav of Doclea and those of his heirs, the Vojislavevici, was quite illustrious. Several of his descendents managed to marry into Byzantine nobility and establish dynastic relations with the Italian Normans, while his great-grandson Constantine Bodin even briefly became the Tsar of Bulgaria following a revolt in Bulgarian Macedonia. However, Doclean hegemony in Serbia was not to last. Early on, Constantine Bodin had installed a distant relative named Vukan as the head or ban of Rascia. Following the death of Constantine Bodin in 1108, Vukan was left as the most powerful man in Serbia and he and his descendents, the Vukanovici, managed to continue to consolidate their rule by establishing relations with the Italians and the Hungarians, while fending off Bulgarian and Byzantine intentions on Serbia. Pride, Power, and Perdition However, the Byzantine empire remained both a threat and opportunity to Serbian intentions. A brief power struggle orchestrated by the Byzantines in the late 12th century resulted in the replacement of the lord or archon Tihomir with a relative, Stefan Nemanja, despite initial efforts by the Byzantines to undermine Stefan. It was thought that Tihomir had displeased Constantinople sufficiently that the Byzantines then chose to sponsor Nemanja instead. Whatever the reasons for Tihomir's supplantation and subsequent death at the hands of Stefan Nemanja, Serbia was now finally evolving from a tenuous tribal confederacy to a modern and centralised polity. Although he wielded no political influence, Stefan Nemanja's son, Rastko, became a monk and subsequently took on the name Sava after Saint Sabbas of Palestine. Sava contributed much to Serbia and even drafted a constitution for Nemanjic Serbia, and for this he was later canonised as an Orthodox Christian saint. Serbian confidence could be seen in how Serbia was first declared a kingdom in 1217, and then an empire and a successor to the now moribund Byzantines in 1345. At the height of Serbian power during the rule of Stefan Uros IV, nicknamed "Dusan the Mighty" in the mid-14th century, Serbia covered an area comprising not just modern Serbia alone, but the regions comprising present-day Montenegro, Kosovo as well as present-day Macedonia (not the former Greek kingdom of Macedon) and northern Greece. Serbia prospered from trade along the Adriatic and was sufficiently powerful to even challenge the more powerful Hungarians to the north, even as its former adversary, the Byzantine empire, withered and fell apart. However, things would not last. As easily as it took the Vukanovici and the Nemanjici to construct the empire, it too soon speedily fell. Tsar Stefan Uros IV had the misfortune of having a son, Stefan Uros V, who was soon known as "the weak". Whether it was because of his lack of competence or because of the difficulties in consolidating the many conquests of his father, what is certain however was that by the end of his life, Serbia began to disintegrate into feudal anarchy, spurred on by military defeats with the Turks. Turkish Occupation The destruction of most of the Serbian army in September 1371 at Maritsa and the subsequent death of Stefan Uros V later that year saw the southern provinces of Serbia being annexed to Ottoman Europe and sealed Serbia's fate. Any hope of remaining independent was soon crushed at the costly battle of Kosovo in 1389 (in which both the Ottoman Sultan and the Serbian lords were killed). The Serbians were by now little more than de facto viceroys for the Hungarian crown in the Balkans, but they would hold out as masters of their own lands before being extinguished by the Ottomans with the 1521 siege of Beograd. Revolts broke out against Ottoman rule, however, but they would be stamped out bloodily and even resulted in the destruction of Saint Sava's relics by the Turkish authorities to discourage further rebellion. Thus, Serbia would remain part of the Ottoman colossus in Europe until its own disintegration at the onset of the mid-19th century. Category:Orthodoxy Category:Factions Category:Spoiler